I can’t believe how overblown this BART issue is. Perhaps it was a stupid decision on BART’s part, but keep in mind that the only reason there is cell service in the stations is due to BART’s deal with the cell phone companies. In most cities you don’t get service underground anyways. And raising first amendment issues with a transit agency? Really? Go protest in front of BART offices or outside BART stations, not on station platforms.

On the Market street enforcement operation (I am not willing to post on SFGate’s comment swamp). I quote:

“Over the course of one hour, the officers at Fifth cited at least 10
cyclists and spoke to two car drivers who were driving illegally in the
public transit lane.”

Really? Cited the cyclists and “spoke” to the card drivers? Where is the fairness? I have nothing against citing cyclists for skirting the law, but why do car drivers get a free pass? If anything, automobiles can inflict a greater damage than cyclists.

Mario Tanev

On the Market street enforcement operation (I am not willing to post on SFGate’s comment swamp). I quote:

“Over the course of one hour, the officers at Fifth cited at least 10
cyclists and spoke to two car drivers who were driving illegally in the
public transit lane.”

Really? Cited the cyclists and “spoke” to the card drivers? Where is the fairness? I have nothing against citing cyclists for skirting the law, but why do car drivers get a free pass? If anything, automobiles can inflict a greater damage than cyclists.

mikesonn

Illegal use of the transit only lane is rampant in the city. The only one that is slightly enforced is the one block stretch of Stockton from Post to Geary during the hours a PCO is standing at Post directing traffic. Otherwise it is a single lane of private auto gridlock with a few Muni buses sprinkled in.

Also, the forced right turns on Market are routinely ignored, much to the peril of the cyclists. My wife was nearly side-swiped by a driver that decided he didn’t want to turn so he gunned it from our right, barely missed us, and crossed over into the transit only lane. Of course, we caught up to him at the next light, as is usually the case with speeding drivers.

High-speed rail is the “test of our generation”? The real test for everyone in California: how dumb are we to start building a project that we can’t finish? The HSR boosters still can’t tell us where the money to build the system is going to come from, but we’re supposed to start building it anyhow?

Mario Tanev

It is reasonable to want to have the full funding for a big project upfront. But that requirement would disqualify any big project in favor of a patchwork of inefficient projects that would end up costing a lot more than the big project (such as piecemeal runway and highway expansions). Based on your reasoning nothing big should ever get done, even if long term it is much more cost-efficient than the alternatives.

The decision to cut off the cell service is a controversial one. I tend to think it was a very bad decision. What gets me most is that from what I’ve read it was a unilateral decision by the BART police, suggested by Lynton Johnson, with no input from the board. If the police force is out of control (Oscar Grant, tazing a boy on a bike outside Richmond BART station last year, shooting that guy at Civic Center) why should they have unfettered control over BART’s services in a non-emergency situation like this one? (Lynette sweet was complaining about it the other day in an article…though Radulovich who came out strongly against the unjustified closing of the 16th St BART station years ago to ‘stamp out’ the Castro Halloween wasn’t really against this tactic).

Mario Tanev

Again, even with those assumptions (which are hearsay, and may be the worse-case scenario), the question is how does it compare to alternatives. If even the worst-case scenario is better than alternatives, then it’s not a bad deal.